The rise of mobile technology and application-based software programs has created a greater demand for sharing medical information. For instance, numerous third-party applications have flooded the marketplace and offer users a service or benefit. Many of these application-based technologies provide health related services, such as tracking and recommending diets, tracking and recommending physical exercise routines, tracking sleep patterns, and tracking reproductive patterns. The number of health based applications goes on and on, and is continually growing larger by the day.
Parallel to the growth in application based health services, the use of electronic medical record (EMR) technology skyrocketed as well. During the 2000's and continuing on, health service facilities have made the move from paper based health records to wholly electronic EMR systems. Some of these EMR systems were not compatible with other EMR systems, which varied from health service facility to health service facility. While a large part of this transition was due to market demand and the increased benefit of EMR systems, much of the transition occurred in response to government regulations and laws that require the adoption of EMR systems.
The transition of health service facilities to EMR systems opened up a new door for health related applications to increase their value based health services by accessing EMRs of individuals. One of the problems with this, however, is that EMR information is some of the most private and personal information related to an individual. For instance, most EMR information includes not only health information, such as diagnoses, medical procedures, and lab results, but also includes personal identifying information, such as names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and so forth. Therefore, this information is increasingly protected and regulated. The increasing protection and regulation regarding EMRs makes it more difficult for application-based health services to access information that is beneficial to the individual consuming the service.
The increasing regulation afforded to EMRs and the increased adoption of EMR systems created a technological problem for application-based health services: The use of various types of EMR systems, some of which are incompatible with each other, led to the inaccessibility of some or all EMR information. Further problems relate to an individual's right to access EMRs and provide their EMRs to these third-party applications, which includes the right to transfer only a selected amount or type of healthcare information. One of the technological challenges that resulted from the rise of application-based health services and the increased adoption of EMR systems, which sometimes includes various types of EMR systems, is the secure transfer of EMRs to application-based health services in a manner that is controlled by the individual.
Conventional methods attempt to address this problem by directly transferring EMRs from healthcare service facilities to third-party applications. However, this method fails in several respects. Here, a user must individually authorize each healthcare service facility to release records to the third-party application. This also includes establishing a user account at each third-party application, which sometimes includes establishing a separate account at a single third-party application for different healthcare service facilities. Then, after having set up the accounts between the various entities, the user is removed from the transfer process, since this occurs directly between the healthcare service facility and the third-party application.